Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Bread for Paupers

Today I made these:We are trying to stick to a weekly grocery budget of $X. Since X only buys so much, we are trying to do some of the usual items on the cheap. Last night we figured out that I could bake a loaf of bread for approximately half of what we'd spend on a comparable loaf at the store, so away I went. I didn't have any whole wheat flour in the house, so I used what I had to make this Amish White Bread. It's still cooling, so I don't know how it is yet, but the crumb that had stuck to the pan was tasty. I'll try it with dinner and report back.

3 comments:

Have you heard of the $30 a week challenge? there are a bunch of food blogs devoted to this sort of thing.

I do like baking bread when I'm not working, but even with the no-knead recipe, there's still the time to preheat and bake (a little over an hour) in which you can't leave for fear of the house burning down :) I think this is a financial decision a lot of people are looking at these days. My other favorite is to buy dry beans and cook in the crockpot (my friend swears by her pressure cooker, but I don't have one)... even chickpeas, which I wouldn't normally think of as "bean". Then I freeze them in 2 cup containers gotten free from take-out and deli items for future use since a can of beans is about 1.5 to 2 cups. We got a costco membership, but the savings really aren't that good on unprocessed ingredients, so the only reason for us to renew it is the cat food.

Woot! It's tricky to make bread that is sandwich-able. I've been baking it into roll-form for a while, and freezing it until I need it. A minute in the microwave (or a couple in the toaster oven, which is even better) and it's good to go.

Now that I'm Unemployed, I make bread a few times a week and it's the staple of our diet. After getting a 25-pound bag of King Arthur Flour at Costco ($13) and bulk yeast from a natural foods store ($7 for a PINT of yeast), I figure the homemade stuff is about 30 cents a loaf, and SO MUCH BETTER than even the $6 loaves at the grocery store. Let me know if you want my family recipe (from my grandpa to my mom to me).